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FLORIDA POLITICS
Since 2002, daily Florida political news and commentary

 

UPDATE: Every morning we review and individually digest Florida political news articles, editorials and punditry. Our sister site, FLA Politics was selected by Campaigns & Elections as one of only ten state blogs in the nation
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Welcome To Florida Politics

Thanks for visiting. On a semi-daily basis we scan Florida's major daily newspapers for significant Florida political news and punditry. We also review the editorial pages and political columnists/pundits for Florida political commentary. The papers we review include: the Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel, Palm Beach Post, Naples News, Sarasota Herald Tribune, St Pete Times, Tampa Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, the Daytona Beach News-Journal, Tallahassee Democrat, and, occasionally, the Florida Times Union; we also review the political news blogs associated with these newspapers.

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The Blog for Friday, April 22, 2005

Dyer: "A partisan witch hunt "

    Leave it to the DB News-Journal to put the Dyer affair in the proper perspective:
    All is back as it ought to be? Not so fast. The case had the marauding air of political trickery from the start.

    An official who spoke at a news conference explained why the charges had been dubious all along. The 1998 law under which the charges were brought wasn't clear, which may explain why no one had been prosecuted under it before. Whatever Dyer and others did with ballots during the campaign, "there was no evil intent on these people's part," the official said, nor had any of them a criminal past. And what they did do was not exactly uncommon practice, judging from press reports -- and indifference -- about it in the past. In other words, charges probably shouldn't have been brought against Dyer and the others.

    The official making such remarks was none other than special prosecutor Brad King of Ocala, whom Bush assigned to the case and who brought up the charges in the first place. Was he apologizing? Not at all. Which raises the question: What was King thinking in his haste to bring charges against the four? He's not saying, although circumstances speak of political motivation, and actions speak louder of irresponsibility on his part, if not outright abuse of the legal process. ...

    King could have decided at any point to stop the investigation. As a state attorney of 16 years he would have discovered quickly that the law being used against Dyer was flawed for being so broad and contradictory as to give fishing expeditions -- or witch hunts -- legal cover. Instead, King went fishing. Any evidence of fraud gathered by Florida Department of Law Enforcement agents would have provided some indication that taking the case to a grand jury was warranted. But the investigation uncovered no fraud. What evidence the indictment rested on is a mystery, although without fraud to go on, what's left, mostly, is King's persuasive powers as prosecutor -- the very same persuasiveness that proved essentially groundless, given his conclusion Wednesday that there was no reason to pursue the case. ...

    That's where it all officially ends. But that's not where it should end, if Florida residents intend to prevent other political opportunists from making a travesty of the judicial process.
    "Dyer indictment".

    An open question - and one that remains to be asked - is what role did the "Jeb!" controlled FDLE have in pushing this absurd political prosecution?

6:42 PM

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